The impact of the pandemic on the education systems across the globe is immense for numerous reasons. On one hand, most countries in the world have closed down schools and moved to some type of online learning which will surely impact the quality of learning but at the same time impacts the home lives of teachers, students and their parents.

The members of NEPC network promptly reacted to this situation to support and cater to the needs of their beneficiaries. In this series, we will present the activities and the practices that our members implemented, adapted or reinforced as they could serve as inspiration for other actors dealing with the implications and impact that this unexceptional circumstances had and still have on education.

In this issue, we feature the initiatives of our Bosnian member, Center for Educational Initiatives Step by Step (CEI).

Support for teachers, principals, parents and children

CEI Step by Step has been developing and posting diverse resources for over 10.000 teachers, members of Community of Innovative Teachers, as well as school principals, parents and children from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Region. Monday become time for sharing teaching strategies aiming to improve students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It’s also a day for weekly challenge for children, and their work has been presented in children’s magazine published every Sunday. Tuesday is all about teaching and talking about human values. Wednesday is a day for laugh, music and art, but also resources for principals such as Leadership in time of crises, and parents – How to survive parenting in a corona time. On Thursday we present large number of ideas send by teachers to other teachers (see here), while on Friday we suggest books, online theater performances and movies together with activities for children. Weekly news is in over 1 500 e-mails on Saturday (see here). Weekend is dedicated to webinars, one focused on providing psychological help to teachers, and other around web platform and media literacy with 40 – 90 participants every week. All resources are available on web platform www.inskola.com 

Advocacy for quality education

In addition, every evening at 7.00 pm we have video interview with distinguish guest in special edition called “Education talks”. We hosted over 20 guests – ministries, policy makers, teachers, students, NGO representatives, university professors, religious leaders, and other stakeholders from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ex-Yugoslavia, answering the questions about current challenges in education, lessons learned, changes we need to do and messages for teachers. Those videos have between 3 and 7.000 views. Recently, we posted them on YouTube channel.

Research

On April 21, proMENTE and CEI began research about parents’ and student’s experience with online learning. The aim of the research is to compare different online school models, examine parents’ and child’s satisfaction, support they have received, workload, concerns and challenges. Results will be available publicly and sent to all ministries and other decision makers. Link for questionnaire www.promente.org/roditelji.